UN agencies have begun to deploy staff in Ethiopia's Somali region in an effort to step up humanitarian aid delivery to the area, officials said.

Paul Hebert, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ethiopia, said several UN agencies had set up offices in Kebridehar and Degehabur. These include the UN World Food Programme, UN Children's Fund, OCHA and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Twelve NGOs have also been accredited to work in the five zones of Degehabur, Gode, Fik, Warder and Korahe, according to OCHA.

“We intend to do an exploratory mission into the Somali region within the next few days,” said Nondas Paschos, spokesman and fundraising director of Médecins sans Frontières-Greece, one of the accredited NGOs.

“Our intention is to find out what the needs are in the region and the conditions under which we can work," he added.

The new UN offices in the Somali region have been set up in addition to the organisation's other bases in the larger Gode and Dire Dawa towns.

The Ethiopian government and the UN reached an agreement in October on measures to ensure that aid would reach vulnerable people in the Somali region.

The UN and Ethiopia's Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Agency (DPPA) decided to establish joint support centres in the most affected areas of the southeastern region to facilitate the logistics of delivering food, medicine, veterinary services and livelihood support.

"The centres will help in the coordination, monitoring and evaluation of aid for the area," said DPPA spokesman Sisay Tadesse.

The UN has expressed concerns over the humanitarian situation and human rights in the area, saying 1.8 million people could be affected.

In a report issued on 5 October, Hebert warned that a major crisis loomed in the Somali region unless livestock trade, commercial and humanitarian food distribution, urgent healthcare, and access by government service providers and humanitarian partners resumed. Hebert led a mission to the region between 30 August and 5 September.

International aid access to the remote and arid area - bordering Somalia and where government troops are cracking down on the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) - has been limited, sometimes due to insecurity.

The conflict has affected trade with neighbouring Somalia, livelihoods and access to basic services.

The Somali region is poor and largely pastoralist, and the food security of the population is highly sensitive to changes in rainfall and market prices for livestock and staple foods.

In a statement to the media on 7 November, ONLF welcomed the opening of the new UN offices, but expressed concern that the government might not allow the agencies to operate in a "free and unfettered manner".

"The TPLF regime [Ethiopian government] is still unjustly paranoid of international humanitarian organisations as demonstrated by the fact that it continues to deny the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] access to the Ogaden," ONLF said.

The ICRC was expelled from the region in August 2007 after the Ethiopian government accused it of spreading baseless accusations.

The DPPA has already started transporting relief food from its Dire Dawa depot to Fik, Gode and Korahe zones, using 99 lorries. The agency said it delivered 2,640 metric tons of cereals, grain and edible oil to the affected zones.

"Additional relief food will be sent to other zones on the coming few days," Sisay said.